A little more about Iran.
Ruhollah Khomeini — his given name means "inspired of God" — was born to a family of Shi'ite scholars in a village near Tehran in 1902. Shi'ism, a minority sect in Islam, is Iran's official religion. Like his father, he moved from theological studies to a career as an Islamic jurist. Throughout his life, he was acclaimed for the depth of his religious learning.
Rummy and Iraq
Rumsfeld might have been a moderate compared to Barry Goldwater, but over the years, his political profile moved to the right, whether as a function of relativity or driven by a actual change in attitude. Illustrative of this point, legend has it that Henry Kissinger describes Rumsfeld as the most ruthless man he ever met (and this is a guy who met Mao Tse-Tung and Augusto Pinochet, not to mention himself).
As the fabulous Ford years drew to a close, Donny R. chose to return to the private sector, focusing on super-lucrative jobs in pharmaceuticals and technology. Although he had no previous business experience, Rumsfeld beefed up his resume with implied political influence by simultaneously serving in a variety of government posts. He served in nearly a dozen special postings of one sort or another from 1982 to 2000.
Perhaps the most memorable of these roles came during the Reagan administration, when Rumsfeld was named special presidential envoy to the Middle East. According to the Washington Post and others, Rumsfeld was a major proponent of the Reagan administration's support of Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein.
As a conciliatory gesture, the U.S. removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982, paving the way for Rumsfeld to visit Baghdad in 1983, about the midpoint of the decade-long Iran-Iraq war.
Commentary
Some would say the way one 'sees' it is the answer. Some would say it's all in a perspective. Some believe the people of Islam are ignorant and need guidance. Still others would say they are crude and cruel and it is the theocratic doctrine that is 'at fault.'
It is none of those.
We are all children of Abraham. But. We are all very, very different. Within in the Christian faith there are two big divisions, namely Catholic and Protestant. Under those divisions there are divisions and under those divisions there are divisions. Yet, they all practice worship to the same God.
In the Hebrew faith there are divisions and there are divisions within divisions but less so than Christian. But. They all worship the same God.
In Islam there are divisions within divisions of the faith. But. They all worship the same God.
This is all monotheism. There is polytheism in the world, namely Hinduism. Buddism sprang from the Hindus.
There is only one Holy Land. It belongs to the worlds' faiths. There are very fortunate people who live within that Holy Land and they are a majority Muslim. When you stop to consider the hugely varied interests in this region of the world and how that interests speaks to the very belief in God what then exists is a chronically charged set of circumstances and a whole lot of ownership problems.
Iraq is the very heart of Islam. The Iman Ali Mosque is the third Mecca for the Shi'ites. The pictures here also show a huge graveyard surrounding the Mosque. It goes to show how the Shi'ites feel about their faith and the proximity of it to their souls. Of course, the Shi'ites still recognize the Five Pillars of Faith of Islam. They still see the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina as their responsiblity. In many, many ways the Shi'ites are the fundamentalists to Islam. It is only logical that they are in the minority. Most fundamentalist faiths are.
The Shi'ites walk the holiest of the ground in Islam. They are keepers of the treasure so to speak. When the USA was about to kill al Sadr and his militia they were also going to destroy the Iman Ali Mosque. That was completely unthinkable and then to realize the one religious leader that could stop them and did was wisked away to London for a Heart Condition is to realize the Shi'ites were desperate beyond any imagination to hold their ground in Najaf. Al Sadr would have given his life to preserve that Mosque. Those people were not fighting against the USA, they were fighting for their right to exist as they had come to know it.
Not all Shi'ites live in Iraq. There are actually two countries where Shi'ites call home. Those two countries are Iraq and Iran. There is no way those two countries will ever have real borders. There are pilgramages all the time and they see their little corner of the world as a whole world of Allah and not two countries. For these people there are no borders between Iran and Iraq. As a matter of fact the enviable position of the Grand Ayatollah al Sistani as the keeper of the Pilgramage of the body of Iman Ali between Kufa and Najah is a precious one and he came from Iran to live his life's devotion. He is immoveable. So is al Sadr. He has lost his father and his grandfather to the Saddam tyranny. Najaf is home to him and the souls of his ancestry. He is immovable.
There is no hatred between the Shi'ites of Iran and Iraq. As a matter of fact those in Iran have a great deal of influence with those in Iraq because they are such a distance from their beloved Iman Ali. The problem here is not the Shi'ites or the Sunnis so much as it is Saddam Hussein. He warred with everyone. He warred with the USA from his balconey of his palances. There are few surrounding countries that Saddam did not invade.
The point is Bush and Blair have done the worst things possible. They have completely destabilized the region allowing the Sunnis to be cast out of paradise only to fight back and they have destabilized a very volitile country by removing the political parties of Saddam without realizing that once Saddam was gone things might turn around for those of the Baath and Sunni people.
The USA coalition forgot that Saddam would even kill his own. What made Bush and Blair this blastedly stupid to extricate the very infrastructure that supplied the Iraqi people with the Oil for Food Program and security within their borders ESPECIALLY realizing they were completely unprepared for providing security in the void that followed. These were and continue to be impoverished people. Of course they are going to loot when they can get away with it.
Iraq has never had much of a military. Even with all these invasions to surrounding countries and chronic border issues under Saddam they were always defeated. There is security in that for all their neighbors. Iraq does not need a large and highly skilled and very powerful military. Quite the contrary. Don Rumsfeld tried to make Saddam into the do all and end all of the Middle East back in the day but during the 'throes' of the Iran-Iraq war after the Aytollah took over in Iraq. Saddam billed himself as a moderate, a Arab interested in secularism for Iraq and for that he received vast amounts of military support with expectations of the West. That was a bad idea. See, Rumsfeld needed to redeem himself from his previous go round in Washington, Dc and it was just too good a deal to try and set the record straight after Carter's Administration washing out in Iran. Don to the rescue. So, Saddam was never seen as the aggressor even then.
But, why?
Why?
Because.
Because the USA made the same mistake then that it is making now and that is the fact they never bothered to LEARN ABOUT the people of the country. People are disposable. There are always to many around anyway. Especially those Arabs who don't even know or care to understand their own assets in their oil. Had the USA government bothered to check the religious dynamics with the Saddam dictatorship it would have realized Saddam was a Sunni and Iran was Shi'ite. Surprise, Saddam is a bigot.
Then as today the USA is serving it's own grievances and priorities at the expense of the safety of the Shi'ites and the miniority Sunnis in Iraq. The Shi'ites are so blastedly scared of the demise of their Holy Land by ANY people outside their faith that they are determined to be dominatant of the country of Iraq and inflexible otherwise. I don't blame them.
What prejudices the issues with Iran surrounds that of nuclear proliferation no different than North Korea, Pakistan and India whom are not supposed to have nuclear weapons. The issues the USA and the rest of the world are about issues other than Iraq and it's security. To think any regional country wants to invade Iraq is nonsense. The Shi'ites of Iran are not interested in killing the Shi'ites of Iraq. The security issues of Iraq are artifical created by the presence of the USA military.
The United States of America needs to leave Iraq. It is dangerously defining ethnic cleansing at the hand of the majority Shi'ites in Iraq by the simple fact they CAN though they SHOULD NOT. There is a lot of diplomacy that needs to take place here. Iraq is not afraid of Iran, nor should it be. The reason for the old Iran-Iraq War is gone. The bigot Saddam is in prison and will face the death sentence with certainty; to that end we can understand the assassinations of his attornies. The Iraqis will be fine and they won't be needing a huge and highly armed and skilled military anytime soon. If it ever fell into the "W"rong hands again. the Shi'ites would be facing the same peril. They do, however need food, water, electricity and their sanity returned to them without the benefit of American Propaganda.
Good night and good luck !
